The 2024-25 Detroit Pistons are preparing for the NBA playoffs, which is not a sentence I imagined I’d be writing at the beginning of this season.
No one is giving them a chance in their first-round series against the Knicks, but even if they got swept, this season has been a success for Detroit.
The Pistons will enter this series believing they can win, and if they play their game, they can, so they have a good chance to break a playoff win drought that goes all the way back to 2008.
The Pistons haven’t even appeared in the playoffs since Blake Griffin led the 2018-19 team there with a 41-41 record, only to get unceremoniously swept in the first round. Even if the same were to happen again, these playoffs are drastically different for the Detroit Pistons.
These aren’t the 2018-19 Detroit Pistons
After watching Blake Griffin carry the Pistons to the playoffs while wearing a knee brace bigger than a small child, most fans realized their limited success wasn’t going to last.
It was clear it was a one-off, a fun story, but one with limited plot that was going nowhere.
The Pistons were carried by a group of veterans headlined by Griffin that also included Andre Drummond, Reggie Jackson, Reggie Bullock, Wayne Ellington and Langston Galloway.
Other than Drummond, all of these guys were over 25 and most of them were journeyman veterans who weren’t getting any better.
The Pistons had nothing in the way of high-end young talent, as guys like Luke Kennard and Bruce Brown would top out as decent role players and players like Stanley Johnson and Henry Ellington were complete busts.
There was no up and coming group to replace the rag-tag collection of veterans the Pistons had assembled, so even though this team was somewhat fun, they were far from a title contender and had no reason to think they’d ever be better.
This year’s Pistons are being led by young players, including Cade Cunningham, who like Blake Griffin, should represent the Pistons on the All-NBA team.
Unlike Griffin, this won’t be Cade’s last appearance, as that 2018-19 season was really Blake’s last as a star in the NBA. Cunningham is just getting started.
The Pistons will have three starters in the playoffs who are all 23 or younger and will bring 23-year-old Isaiah Stewart to go along with 19-year-old rookie Ron Holland off the bench. I haven’t even mentioned the injured Jaden Ivey, another 23-year-old who has not yet reached his prime.
Every one of these players has more promise than any of the young guys the Pistons had back in 2018-19, so while the teams may have similar expectations for playoff success, their futures couldn’t be any different.
What the Pistons are building now isn’t a house of cards that can’t be sustained, as they have a foundation of young talent that we can expect to improve.
Sustained success has eluded the Pistons since the Goin’ to Work days, but they finally have a roster that is already good and will only get better, something they haven’t had in a long time.